


Don't Recall

by tricksterity



Series: Commissions [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hale Family, Alpha Talia Hale, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire, Kid Fic, Kinda?, M/M, not trans scott sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 13:08:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10491579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tricksterity/pseuds/tricksterity
Summary: When Derek Hale was nine years old, he met a little girl with a crooked jawline in the park who wanted to know if a frog had ever licked him. A few weeks later she left Beacon Hills, teary-eyed, and promising to come back and marry him once they both grew up.Now at twenty-three, Derek Hale meets a young man with a crooked jawline and a brilliant smile, who reminds him eerily of this little girl - but no, Cora, he'snotbisexual. He'd know by now.(aka where kid!Derek is an idiot and he thinks he's straight because he's never been attracted to a boy.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Javika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Javika/gifts).



> Written as a commission for Javika! Thanks so much xoxo

* * *

 

Waiting outside the Beacon Hills Community College campus, watching the young and bright-eyed eighteen-year-old freshmen made Derek feel old. Despite the fact that he’d been in their shoes not too long ago and had only graduated three years ago didn’t change the fact that it felt like a lifetime since he’d been running about with textbooks and coffee and his gym bag.

 

He leaned back on the Camaro and tipped his face up towards the overcast sky, breathing in the air and letting himself relax. He tried to forget the multitude of things he had to do, the number of ancient tomes and texts he was trying to track down or was in the middle of negotiations for. Talia and Peter always seemed to be throwing another request at him for another bestiary they needed, of which only five copies had ever been created, only two were in the U.S. and he had to negotiate with hunters to get either of them, et cetera.

 

If only Talia would let Peter be his sneaky self and just go and negotiate for them himself, but _no_ , they were Hales and had to do things the right way. Yeah, Derek had agreed with her up until he’d graduated with an honor’s degree in English and he’d been saddled with the responsibility of legally acquiring everything. And nobody these days thought to use Ebay to sell their shit.

 

He was supposed to be meeting with an offshoot of the Calavera hunters to buy a text on selkies, as the one in the lake was acting weird and his father wasn’t sure what was going on, but instead Cora’s car had broken down and she needed a lift home. Like she couldn’t just walk home, or they didn’t have thirteen other family members to pick her up. _Literally_. Derek was used to a full house, had to be with two siblings and two uncles, but their pack was getting a little crazy in terms of size.

 

The sound of a dirt bike broke Derek out of his sudden thoughts, and he turned to see a motorcyclist pull up a few parking spaces away. The bike was clearly secondhand, a green-and-white Kawasaki, but it looked well loved and taken care of. Derek could appreciate someone who took care of their vehicle, especially when it looked as though the rider had saved up to buy it themselves.

 

The motorcyclist took his helmet off, revealing warm brown skin and dark hair that looked like it was inches away from curling adorably. The kid, who probably wasn’t even twenty yet, looked out at the campus before him with excitement and a little bit of trepidation. He looked too old to be a freshman, but he could’ve been picking someone up just like Derek was. He turned in Derek’s direction when he tapped out the kickstand of the bike with his foot, and Derek was hit with a sudden and strange wave of familiarity.

 

Suddenly he was nine years old again, babysitting Cora at the park with Laura, being approached by a little girl. She’d had the same crooked jawline as this boy and the same dark eyes, and her hair curled around her ears and under her chin. She’d been a bit of a tomboy, in overalls and a black shirt, and she had steadfastly ignored Cora, who was around her age, and approached Derek instead.

 

“Hi,” she’d said, voice high-pitched and childish.

 

“Hi?” Derek had replied, a little confused as to why the girl wanted to speak with him.

 

“Wanna help me find a frog?” she’d then asked, and Derek remembered being a little bowled over by the random question. He was used to it by then, though, considering the number of times Cora had made random requests like that too. He looked up to see that the little girl didn’t have anyone else to play with, and her parents were standing off near the tree line, arguing. They had to be her parents, nobody else had the same dark curls or brown skin.

 

Laura was paying attention to Cora even though she was hanging out with her middle-school friends on the swingset, and Mama was on the phone but looking at them all. She’d hear if any of them were in danger, and Derek had shrugged.

 

“Why?” he asked. The little girl grinned, revealing tiny baby teeth spaced out weirdly.

 

“I want to see what it’s like when a frog licks me,” she had answered as though it made total sense. “Have you ever been licked by a frog?”

 

Derek remembered staring down at her for a few seconds. “No,” he’d eventually answered.

 

“Well c’mon then!” she’d said, grabbing Derek’s wrist in her tiny little hand, trying her best to drag him back through the playground and into the nearby tree line. It wasn’t so much of a forest as a small grove of trees, and Derek hadn’t thought frogs would live in there, but he’d followed her anyway. In the end they never found a frog, so neither of them would know what it was like to be licked by one, and the girl had hugged him goodbye as he’d left.

 

The little girl had been at the playground a few more times over the next few months, always bounding over to Derek excitedly to play some weird game, though tag was never an option due to the girl’s asthma (and he could always hear her breath wheezing in her chest after a while). Then one day the girl had been crying underneath the slide, and Derek had crawled in with her, and she’d admitted that her parents were breaking up and they were moving away.

 

Derek hadn’t been able to do much more than hug her and tell her that it was going to be okay. She’d surprised him by kissing him on the cheek and vowing with a little furrowed brow and pout that she’d come back one day to marry him. Laura had overheard and giggled, and Derek hadn’t had the heart to reject her, so he’d agreed to that promise, and that had been that.

 

Pulled back to the present by the sound of laughter in the distance, Derek now wondered if the girl had a brother or something, because the similarities were uncanny. She’d never mentioned anything of the sort, though, and he hadn’t ever even found out her name. He’d often wondered throughout the years idly if she’d been okay with moving away, if she’d been doing okay wherever she was, if she’d found someone else to ‘propose’ to.

 

He was tempted to ask the boy if he knew her, but at that moment his hearing picked up on his sister’s voice. Cora was leaving the humanities building, hair pulled up into a messy ponytail, soccer uniform still on as she laughed with her teammates. She’d received a sports scholarship to BHCC, though for soccer rather than basketball like Derek had, even though their family had enough money to send them both there without.

 

“Hey,” the boy with the motorcycle said, and Derek turned to look at him. “Do you know which is the science building?” He had an easy smile on his face, and Derek noticed a dark tattoo circling his bicep from where one of his sleeves had ridden up after he pulled off his jacket.

 

“It’s behind that big brick one over on the left, which is the engineering building,” Derek replied, knowing how easy it was to get lost on foreign campuses. “Are you after a specific room? The science building is confusing as hell.”

 

“Nah, I should be okay,” the boy said with another one of those smiles. It sent something fluttering in Derek’s stomach, and he wondered if maybe he was getting sick. “I’m just looking for a friend. Thanks!”

 

And he was off, passing Cora as she waved goodbye to her friends and approached Derek. She turned to watch the boy go as he passed, and then she raised her brows at Derek in quite the suggestive manner.

 

“He’s cute,” she noted, and Derek sighed.

 

“And I told you, Cora, I’m not interested in guys,” Derek responded for the eighty-fifth time. Although considering his horrendous track record with women, maybe dating a guy would actually improve his romantic history. First a psychotic hunter who nearly burned their house down, then an English major in his department who ended up being a Darach, and then Braeden – who’d been wonderful and badass, but who unfortunately wasn’t looking for an awkward werewolf to date. And they both did too much travelling after Derek graduated for them to really stay in contact.

 

Cora simply pursed her lips and raised a brow exactly like Peter did. “Sure, Derek, whatever you say,” she deadpanned. Derek glared and pulled open the passenger side door for her.

 

“I’m _not_ ,” he all but growled.

 

“You know there’s nothing bad about being bisexual, Derek,” Cora said as she slid into the car, in a tone that implied he was being an idiot. Of course he knew there was nothing wrong with being queer, considering Cora was dating a girl and Peter and Oliver had been married for what seemed like a lifetime. But Derek knew himself, and at twenty-three years old, he was pretty sure he wasn’t into guys.

 

As he watched the boy disappear through the throng of students hurrying to classes or meandering around, though, he wondered if he was entirely correct in knowing himself.

 

On the way home they ended up having to detour to the preschool to pick up their cousins, Solana and Sofia, and it took about ten minutes to wrangle them into the back seat of the Camaro on makeshift booster seats that they made out of Cora’s gym bag and some textbooks. They had to make the twins promise that they wouldn’t tell their parents about it, because Enrique would go ballistic if he found out his girls were being unsafe in Derek’s car.

 

The twins agreed, and Derek was thankful that they at least were well behaved, because Laura’s son was in his terrible twos and getting him to do _anything_ was a nightmare. On more than one occasion Talia had needed to alpha order that kid to get into the shower.

 

Arriving back home was always something of a relief to Derek, not having to put up any more façades of normality or humanity. Crossing the border from the preserve into pack territory made something within him release from the tight knot it had gotten itself into, and even the ridiculously overcrowded houses didn’t change that.

 

Hales never really moved out of home, much less left the borders of Beacon Hills for extended periods of time. More houses had to be constructed on Hale property to make room for their rapidly extending family – Derek, Cora and their parents lived in the main house with Uncle Peter and his partner Oliver. His grandparents had moved into a small cottage further into the woods, while Uncle James and his side of the family – wife, two kids (twins), a son-in-law and now the two other twins – had constructed a home for themselves shortly after Rowan and Hyejin had been born. The odds of a twin having twins was so minimal that they’d actually had to add on another bedroom for Solana and Sofia.

 

Laura plus her husband and son had their own little place built as soon as they found out that Laura was pregnant. They were all easily within walking distance of the main Hale household, and often after school hours everyone congregated on the front porch, Oliver and Peter firing up the barbecue.

 

Derek was somewhat of the poster child for social anxiety, despite his popularity in high school and college, and only really felt comfortable around his family. Solana and Sofia got out of the car as soon as Derek hit the brakes and ran off to their parents with giggles, and Derek wanted to go straight to bed. He’d had a long day chasing up leads on a specific book that Peter was after to deal with apparent sightings of centaurs across their border.

 

The pack seemed to pick up on that, and thankfully none of them tried to corral Derek into helping the kids with their homework or setting up for dinner. He headed straight to his bed and collapsed on top of the covers, knowing that at least someone would wake him up before all the dinner was gone.

 

Sure enough the sun had almost set by the time Rowan came into Derek’s room and threw something at him, letting him know that if he wanted to eat now was the time to get up. Derek dragged his body out to the front porch and was handed a paper plate piled with barbecued meat and mashed potatoes by Laura.

 

For some reason Derek thought about that little girl in the park as he all but tore into his steak. Talia seemed to know what was up and came to sit next to him on the wooden stairs, wrapping an arm around his shoulders.

 

“What’s got you all broody and introverted?” she asked, exuding warmth. There was nowhere Derek felt more comfortable than in his mothers arms.

 

“Just thinking about that little girl I met a few years ago,” he said, and Talia frowned. “You know, the one in the park who wanted to be licked by a frog?”

 

Talia blinked a few times, lashes fluttering, as she comprehended that the same way Derek had back in elementary school.

 

“You knew a little girl who wanted a frog to lick her?” Talia asked. “That’s the first I’ve heard about it.”

 

“Yeah, me and Laura were babysitting Cora, I would’ve been maybe nine or ten, and she ended up leaving Beacon Hills,” Derek explained. He finished his steak and shoveled some mashed potatoes in. He might not be a teenager anymore but he still needed a _lot_ of calories.

 

Talia shrugged and tightened her grip on Derek. “Sorry kiddo, I don’t recall.”

 

Flushing, Derek expanded on his words. “She kinda… made me promise that I would marry her someday when she moved back,” he said. Talia blinked again, and in the distance Laura began to laugh uncontrollably, which set Talia off, though it was limited just to her shoulders shaking and sucking her lips in to contain the laughter.

 

Derek looked between his sister and mother, thoroughly confused. Even his father had a wry expression on his face.

 

“What?” he asked, wondering just _what_ was so funny. Yeah, it was a little odd, but nothing to get this worked up about.

 

“Oh, son,” Talia ended up saying once she could form words again, running a hand through his hair. “That’s cute. That’s really cute of you.”

 

Entirely bewildered at this point, Derek looked across the yard to Laura for answers, who was laughing so hard her husband had to physically hold her upright. Soon enough she’d pull something from laughing to hard- and were those _tears_ on her cheeks?

 

“ _What?_ ”

 

It was clear he wasn’t getting an answer soon, and Derek was suddenly not so hungry any more. Talia seemed to take pity on him and so she released her hold around his shoulders to grab each side of his head, turning his face so she could look him dead in the eyes.

 

“That wasn’t a little girl, Derek,” Talia said, voice deep and serious like she was delivering news of war. “That little boy was Scott McCall.”

 

Now it was Derek’s turn to blink in confusion. Laura was now on the floor, gasping for breath, which the three kids found incredibly contagious. Cora snorted from where she was sitting next to Peter.

 

“So much for not being into guys, Derek,” she teased. “You’ve been betrothed to one since elementary school. Congratulations, you’ve failed heterosexuality.”

 

Peter burst out laughing at that and high-fived his favourite niece.

 

“Oliver and I failed that class from the womb,” Peter continued, sending a wink to his partner.

 

“Welcome to the club, cuz!” Hyejin crowed from where she was trying to pick up her daughters from where they’d fallen on the floor next to Laura, giggling away. “We’re proud of you!”

 

“Congratulations on the engagement, grandson,” Grandma Namida piped up from her seat next to the fire, grey hair pulled up into a perfect bun as per usual. She had never been a good influence on Derek’s grandfather, who was soundly asleep at her side. “When’s the wedding?”

 

Derek sent her a thoroughly unimpressed look and his hand twitched with the urge to stick up his middle finger at his seventy-one-year-old grandmother, who was cackling away merrily.

 

“Okay, so I might be bisexual,” he said, hoping that they’d all stop, but instead everyone else started laughing and lobbing money at each other. _Christ_ , they’d had a bet going. And it didn’t seem to be _if_ he’d come out, but _when_. How did they know before he did?

 

“Mother’s intuition,” Talia said, answering his unasked question, raising her hand up periodically to receive the money flying at her. “Also, pack intuition. We were worried you’d always be stuck in the mindset of those high school friends of yours.”

 

And – yeah, looking back on the words of Derek’s high school basketball team and best friends, he could see how their constant chatter about how much they wanted to bang a girl from another team or how gross it was to be in the same changing room as one of the few out gay guys in the school would’ve influenced his personal feelings about his own sexuality.

 

Talia pulled him in by the grip she still had on his face and kissed him on the forehead.

 

“Dessert?” she asked, getting up to help his father bring it all in from the kitchen. And just like that, the night continued on, with the kids running around the bonfire, Peter and Cora chatting in the corner about something on the iPad between them, Sumin sighing despondently at Rowan who didn’t look up from his phone once, Enrique fussing about how close the twins were to the fire. It was like nothing even happened.

 

Derek looked over at Oliver, who approached Peter and crouched down behind him, wrapping their arms around Peter’s shoulders with a soft smile, and was grateful for the family that he had. It could be so much worse.

 

* * *

 

A week later, Derek was once again on Cora duty. Apparently her car had been more fucked than she’d planned for, and all the money in the world couldn’t fix the car faster than the mechanics could work. It would probably be cheaper at this point for her to get a _new_ one than to fix the extensive damage that had nearly totaled her car. It had been a little difficult to explain to the mechanic just _what_ caused the damage, considering that the huge claw marks in the back hadn’t exactly been easily explained as a ‘fuck-off huge honey badger’ of all things. Those were vicious creatures.

 

Flyers were stuck all about campus advertising a mid-semester party at the campus bar later that night, and Derek had the sinking feeling that the mischievous expression on Cora’s face (that she’d inherited from Grandma) as she approached him was related to it.

 

“No,” he said, before she’d even opened her mouth.

 

“Oh, c’mon Der, it’s _one_ party. You remember those?” she drawled, twirling his keys around her finger. He hadn’t even noticed her swiping them; she’d clearly been hanging around Peter far too much.

 

“Yeah, I remember that I can’t get drunk and being the only sober one in a room full of smashed college kids isn’t exactly thrilling,” Derek replied back in the same Hale-patent unimpressed tone. “Especially when I’ve still got a beastiary to track down for the Argents. The _Argents_ , Cora.”

 

Her lip curled up at the mention of the family whose now-disowned little psycho had nearly gotten them killed. But she persisted, and gave him the very puppy dog eyes that’d gotten the both of them in so much trouble as kids.

 

“Please?” she begged. “Tash is coming with me and she’s probably going to get totally trashed and I won’t be able to drive her back home.”

 

“That’s a pretty weak excuse, Cora,” he deflected, crossing his arms.

 

She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, then smirked. “That cute kid with the uneven jawline and motorcycle’s gonna be coming too,” she said. “I heard him and his friend talking about it.”

 

Derek raised an eyebrow. “And why would I care about him going?”

 

This seemed to be the response Cora was hoping for, because she grinned wickedly in a way that made Derek want to keep her and Peter away from each other for the rest of time.

 

“Because when I heard him talking to his friend, his friend called him _Scott_ ,” she said. “As in Scott McCall. As in, your betrothed husband-to-be.”

 

Derek had to fight down the flush that came to his cheeks in both equal amounts frustration and embarrassment. A week and his family still wouldn’t stop making jokes about it. But… maybe actually talking to Scott and sorting out his own feelings would make them stop for once. Derek pursed his lips at Cora’s blatant manipulation.

 

“Fine,” he ground out from between gritted teeth. “But this is the last time you get to use that against me.”

 

Cora smiled and handed back his keys, happy as a clam.

 

“It starts at nine,” she said. “So we’ll get here about ten-thirty. Don’t worry, you’ll have _fun_.”

 

Fun was the _last_ thing that Derek was having.

 

He’d allowed Cora to drag him out of the house after she’d fluffed about making sure he was wearing the right thing and that his hair looked good, and they picked up Cora’s girlfriend Natasha on the way; now barely an hour into the party and Derek was overwarm and feeling sticky all over from the sheer amount of sweat that everyone was exuding. How it didn’t offend Cora’s senses, Derek didn’t know, but she was happily dancing away with her girlfriend in the darkest corner of the bar.

 

Derek on the other hand was closest to the door, at least trying to get some fresh air, holding a sub-par beer in his hand that cost far too much money. He wanted to scarper, but then Tash and Cora wouldn’t have a ride home, and so he resigned himself to trying to physically dissociate from his body for the rest of the night when a familiar voice called out over the throng of people and music.

 

“Stiles, don’t!” the voice said. Derek looked over to see Scott McCall trying to convince a long-limbed boy to not climb up onto the table and dance. He failed miserably, but at least Stiles looked like he was having a good time, and a few drunken college kids cheered and egged him on.

 

Scott face-palmed and muttered _oh my god_ under his breath, and headed straight for the bar to grab a drink of something stronger than lite beer.

 

Derek, desperately needing something to do, approached Scott at the bar and paid for his drink for him.

 

“Dude, you didn’t have to do that!” Scott said, wide-eyed as Derek tucked his card back into his pocket.

 

“I wanted to,” Derek shrugged. “I’m Derek.”

 

“Scott,” he replied, smiling. That megawatt grin did something to Derek’s insides, the same thing that happened when he used to think about Braeden. That sort of cemented his decision to say the next few words.

 

“Have you ever been licked by a frog?” Derek asked. Scott blinked for a few seconds, and then burst out into laughter so happy you could’ve ended powered the town with it.

 

“I thought it was you!” Scott replied, edging closer. “I didn’t want to assume anything though, especially not after… _well_ …”

 

“After you proposed to me?” Derek asked, and Scott’s cheeks flushed a beautiful colour.

 

“Yeah,” Scott admitted. “I mean, in my defense I was, like, six years old and you were cute. I mean- are cute. You’re still cute.”

 

Derek couldn’t help but huff a laugh at Scott’s sudden tied tongue.

 

“Don’t worry,” he replied. “You are too.”

 

Scott blushed even harder and bit his lower lip, and Derek kind of wanted to do that for him. Instead he just leaned closer until he could smell the scent of cinnamon on Scott’s skin, and smiled.

 

“You wanna make good on your promise?” he asked.

 

“What?” Scott replied, coy and incredulous. “To get married?”

 

Derek huffed a laugh. “Well, not quite yet. How about we start with a date, first?”

 

Scott stared at him with wide eyes, and Derek tried desperately not to let the blush claw its way up on his face. He wasn’t sure what was coming over him, but he knew that he didn’t want to see Scott stop smiling ever.

 

“Sure,” Scott eventually replied, a little breathless. Derek smiled and clinked their drinks together, and took a sip of the now less shitty beer.

 

* * *

 

Many months later, Derek was left with flaming cheeks as Laura proudly told the room of the story of how he met his fiancé – now husband – in the park to look for frogs, and thought he was a girl.

 

Scott laughed good-naturedly, Stiles backed up Derek’s mistake with photos of Scott at age five (who’d refused to cut his hair), and Derek tried to drown his embarrassment in wolfsbane-laced champagne.

 

They received eighteen frog statuettes, and one real live frog, as wedding presents.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if you'd like to see something similar to this though instead of Derek being a huge dork it's trans Scott, because I'd love to write that too, and it might happen one day!


End file.
